Several years ago, Paul wrote a science fiction book called The Sol-Bect War. It started as a sort of made-up dream he played in his head while trying to fall asleep. It ended up being the most popular product we’ve released to date. Today, on Paul’s birthday, I wanted to take a few moments to talk about this science fiction saga.

If you have not read these books, here’s a quick synopsis of the first book:

Humanity is near the tail end of an intergalactic war with an alien race called the Bect — a war we are losing. The only thing we have in shorter supply than combat pilots is hope.

After a rough skirmish, a strange object is picked up by the United Earth carrier Ticonderoga. Within the object, the ship’s scientists find something even stranger: a man, cryogenically frozen and shot into space more than 300 years ago. The fact that he’s still technically alive raises questions of Fate’s hand in life and war.

Some Historical Tidbits

The Sol-Bect War’s first draft was a monster at around 160,000 words. I had the privilege of being one of the first readers. At one point, I suggested splitting the book into two parts, because of the length. Paul split the book, then rejoined it, and later split it again. And then he started writing a sequel that takes place a few years after the conclusion of the second part. These manuscripts eventually became The Sol-Bect War Saga, which is now published in four volumes:

The Sol-Bect War Saga

While editing the second part of the saga, I suggested removing an entire scene where Peter McCabe goes back into the past to set up his future. Initial drafts of that scene were not very exciting and were slowing down the pace of the novel. Still, it’s an important scene, and one that needed to be released at some point. But the second part was already pushing 100,000 words on its own, and at that point in the story I just wanted to get to the war! So I felt it was best to remove the whole scene and insert an abbreviated transition to get the story moving along. Paul agreed.

Paul later revised that scene into The Sol-Bect Setup, which is a lot more exciting. We published that as the anchor story in the Terran Shift Anthology last November, along with six other stories all set in the four eras of the Terran Shift universe.

Some Interesting Facts

While thinking about these books and looking through company sales records and notes, I picked out some facts that I felt were quite interesting:

Including the revised Sol-Bect Setup story in the Terran Shift Anthology, the Sol-Bect War saga consists of almost 290,000 words.

The Sol-Bect War, Part 1 is our best-selling book, having sold 81 copies so far.

All four books above, combined, have sold 175 copies.

Of those 175 copies, 131 were sold in the Kindle stores and 5 were paperbacks.

Most people who purchase Part 1 also purchase Part 2 at the same time. Since the release of Part 3, we’ve seen several instances of people purchasing all three parts in the same transaction.

We have sold copies of The Sol-Bect War books all over the world: USA, Canada, India, Germany, the UK, and Australia.

Go To War

Follow Peter McCabe into battle in The Sol-Bect War saga. All four ebooks are $2.99 each at all major ebook retailers. The three novels are also available in paperback at Amazon and CreateSpace. Links to all stores are on the book pages (click the book cover images above).

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[…] June, I posted about Paul’s science fiction saga The Sol-Bect War (Highlight on the Sol-Bect War Saga). Since then, we have passed a few more milestones with this series, including selling more than […]